10 Steps to Article Optimization

Writing articles takes hard work and dedication, but they can be very beneficial to promoting you and your personal brand. If you plan on using articles to attract attention and bring traffic to your website or blog, make sure to follow these steps and get the most out of your efforts.

1. Determine Who Your Audience Is.
Find out who you are writing for and optimize your word choice and language to fit your audience. If your audience is not familiar with the topic, it would not make sense to use special jargon only known by industry professionals.

2. Write Relevant and Valuable Content.
Create relevant content that will be useful to your audience to make it shareable. Explain with steps, use humor, attack a concept/idea, provide news, answer a question, or solve a problem. An article that is both entertaining and informative will get you the best results.

3. Include a Title in Your H1 Tags.
Keywords are picked up by search engines and help readers understand what you are talking about. Don’t let go of this amazing opportunity to be found and place the keywords in the right place for optimal exposure in search results.

4. Use Appropriate Keywords.
Keep your keyword saturation from 1-3%. Avoid keyword flooding, as that will result in the language of your article sounding very unnatural and forced.

5. Use Format Options.
When appropriate, use bold, italic, or underline font options to make it easy for your reader to skim the article. This will ensure that you catch both types of readers, the ones that like to sit down and absorb everything, and the ones that love to just catch the gist of what is being said.

6. Use Anchor Text.
Most article directories allow you to place one to three anchor texts to get people to link to your website. Customizing your anchor text will let the reader know more information about the link, and will raise the likeliness of clicking it.

7. Check Your Spelling and Grammar.
Look out for any mistakes, use spell-check, read your content out loud, or ask someone to review it before submission. This will prevent embarrassment and will prove to your reader that you are an educated individual.

8. Post Your Article to Your Own Site.
After publishing your article, check to see if the final look is what was intended. Make sure that all images are showing and that the text is organized in the way you planned for it to be, and make adjustments if needed.

9. Share Your Article.
Showcase your content with Social Seeding across highly visible platforms, like social aggregation sites, social communities, blogs, and email. This will expose your content to a much broader audience as more and more people share.

10. Be Indexed by Search Engines.
After completing all of these steps, you will have more indexed pages on search engines. If you stick to the guide and persistently upload more content, your chances of being found on the web will increase steadily and become a lot easier on your side.